MAMI. Onassis Stegi

Drawing inspiration from personal experiences, he set up an unholy sanctuary in the relationship between mother and child. To praise it. To exorcise it. To fill it with vows and curses. To fall in love with it. Because, as he himself noted: “I always said that birth is a love gone wrong.”

The stage was transformed into a landscape of memory – familiar and, at the same time, otherworldly. The performers, enveloped in silence, created deeply moving events and urged us to recognize and confront our own memories, our own relationships and the emotional legacy we carry.

Creator of a stage language entirely his own, the 26-year-old Albanian-born Mario Banushi had already toured the world with his first works, “Goodbye, Lindita” (2023) and “Taverna Miresia – Mario, Bella, Anastasia” (2023), earning international acclaim as the child prodigy of Greek theater. And while the theme in his previous performances was mourning, in “MAMI” it was the source of life. Because in Banushi’s personal mythology, the almost homonymous words “mami” and “mam” became identical. Mami, like mother. Mam, like food. One took out his heart and offered it to the other like a loaf of steaming bread.

The breakout director’s new creation was a visual poem about the relationship between mother and child. A performance offered as a tribute to women who nourished us.